If we are bored with the Mass and stop paying attention to it, we miss out on what is the entire miracle of being a Catholic Christian. We enter the sanctuary of a Catholic church and sacramentally step in to the presence of the Almighty Divine. We come to Mass to worship God, not to be entertained. And when we acknowledge that reality, our actions and attitude in prayer change.

Sometimes when you promise God you’ll serve him and live a life of radical love, he gives you the opportunity to do so at the most inopportune times. Even so, the experiences are so amazing that it’s hard to regret living totally for him.

Christ is pretty explicit about the need to love our enemies, and the Catholic Church directly states that torture “is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.” But for many it’s not so clear when “enhanced interrogation” is used against the “bad guys.”

Whenever we have a hard time showing mercy to someone else because we don’t think they deserve it, it’s important for us to think about how much we don’t deserve the mercy that is extended to us from Christ. Whenever someone does something that really bothers me, I’ve been making an effort to think about if I’d want Christ to forgive me of the same thing. The answer, so far at least, has always been “yes”, even when they haven’t done anything to deserve my continued love and forgiveness.

The greatest disease in the West, according to Mother Teresa, has little to do with not having enough bread to eat, and everything to do with not having a loving community to eat it with. But what can we do to cure what afflicts our culture?

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